Serving advertisements based on content

ABSTRACT

Advertisers are permitted to put targeted ads on page on the web (or some other document of any media type). The present invention may do so by (i) obtaining content that includes available spots for ads, (ii) determining ads relevant to content, and/or (iii) combining content with ads determined to be relevant to the content.

§ 0. RELATED APPLICATION

Benefit is claimed, under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e)(1) and 35 U.S.C. § 120, tothe filing dates of: (i) U.S. Provisional Application Serial No.60/413,536, entitled “METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR SERVING RELEVANTADVERTISEMENTS”, filed on Sept. 24, 2002 and listing Jeffrey A. Dean,Georges R. Harik and Paul Buchheit as inventors; and (ii) U.S. patentapplication Ser. No.10/314,427, entitled “METHODS AND APPARATUS FORSERVING RELEVANT ADVERTISEMENTS”, filed on Dec. 6, 2002 and listingJeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik and Paul Buchheit as inventors, forany inventions disclosed in the manner provided by 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 1.The provisional application and utility application are expresslyincorporated herein by reference.

§ 1. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. § 1.1 Field of the Invention

The present invention concerns advertising. In particular, the presentinvention concerns expanding the opportunities for advertisers to targettheir ads.

2. § 1.2 Related Art

Advertising using traditional media, such as television, radio,newspapers and magazines, is well known. Unfortunately, even when armedwith demographic studies and entirely reasonable assumptions about thetypical audience of various media outlets, advertisers recognize thatmuch of their ad budget is simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficultto identify and eliminate such waste.

Recently, advertising over more interactive media has become popular.For example, as the number of people using the Internet has exploded,advertisers have come to appreciate media and services offered over theInternet as a potentially powerful way to advertise.

Advertisers have developed several strategies in an attempt to maximizethe value of such advertising. In one strategy, advertisers use popularpresences or means for Providing interactive media or services (referredto as “Web sites” in the specification without loss of generality) asconduits to reach a large audience. Using this first approach, anadvertiser may place ads on the home page of the New York Times Website, or the USA Today Web site, for example. In another strategy, anadvertiser may attempt to target its ads to more narrow niche audiences,thereby increasing the likelihood of a positive response by theaudience. For example, an agency promoting tourism in the Costa Ricanrainforest might place ads on the ecotourism-travel subdirectory of theYahoo Web site. An advertiser will normally determine such targetingmanually.

Regardless of the strategy, Web site-based ads (also referred to as “Webads”) are typically presented to their advertising audience in the formof “banner ads”—i.e., a rectangular box that includes graphiccomponents. When a member of the advertising audience (referred to as a“viewer” or “user” in the Specification without loss of generality)selects one of these banner ads by clicking on it, embedded hypertextlinks typically direct the viewer to the advertiser's Web site. Thisprocess, wherein the viewer selects an ad, is commonly referred to as a“click-through” (“Click-through” is intended to cover any userselection.). The ratio of the number of click-throughs to the number ofimpressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed) iscommonly referred to as the “click-through rate” of the ad. A“conversion” is said to occur when a user consummates a transactionrelated to a previously served ad. What constitutes a conversion mayvary from case to case and can be determined in a variety of ways. Forexample, it may be the case that a conversion occurs when a user clickson an ad, is referred to the advertiser's web page, and consummates apurchase there before leaving that web page. Alternatively, a conversionmay be defined as a user being shown an ad, and making a purchase on theadvertiser's web page within a predetermined time (e.g., seven days).Many other definitions of what constitutes a conversion are possible.The ratio of the number of conversions to the number of impressions ofthe ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed) is commonlyreferred to as the conversion rate. If a conversion is defined to beable to occur within a predetermined time since the serving of an ad,one possible definition of the conversion rate might only consider adsthat have been served more than the predetermined time in the past.

Despite the initial promise of Web site-based advertisement, thereremain several problems with existing approaches. Although advertisersare able to reach a large audience, they are frequently dissatisfiedwith the return on their advertisement investment. Some have attemptedto improve ad performance by tracking the online habits of users, butthis approach has led to privacy concerns.

Similarly, the hosts of Web sites on which the ads are presented(referred to as “Web site hosts” or “ad consumers”) have the challengeof maximizing ad revenue without impairing their users' experience. SomeWeb site hosts have chosen to place advertising revenues over theinterests of users. One such Web site is “Overture.com”, which hosts aso-called “search engine” service returning advertisements masqueradingas “search results” in response to user queries. The Overture.com website permits advertisers to pay to position an ad for their Web site (ora target Web site) higher up on the list of purported search results. Ifsuch schemes where the advertiser only pays if a user clicks on the ad(i.e., cost-per-click) are implemented, the advertiser lacks incentiveto target their ads effectively, since a poorly targeted ad will not beclicked and therefore will not require payment. Consequently, highcost-per-click ads show up near or at the top, but do not necessarilytranslate into real revenue for the ad publisher because viewers don'tclick on them. Furthermore, ads that viewers would click on are furtherdown the list, or not on the list at all, and so relevancy of ads iscompromised.

Search engines, such as Google for example, have enabled advertisers totarget their ads so that they will be rendered in conjunction with asearch results page responsive to a query that is relevant, presumably,to the ad. Although search result pages afford advertisers a greatopportunity to target their ads to a more receptive audience, searchresult pages are merely a fraction of page views of the World Wide Web.

Some have attempted to manually map Web pages to one or more categoriesbased on a category taxonomy. Such manual classification of Web pageshas numerous disadvantages. First, manual classification can be timeconsuming, expensive, and prone to inconsistent applications due to thesubjectivity of different classifiers. Moreover, given the sheer numberof Web pages and the fact that content changes so often, manualclassification on a wide scale is impractical.

Thus, it would be useful to allow advertisers to put targeted ads on anypage on the web (or some other document of any media type) rather thanjust search results page. Such a scheme should avoid manualclassifications and its inherent, often insurmountable disadvantages.

§ 2.SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention allows advertisers to put targeted ads on any pageon the web (or some other document of any media type). The presentinvention may do so by (i) obtaining content that includes availablespots for ads, (ii) determining ads relevant to content, and/or (iii)combining content with ads determined to be relevant to the content.

§3. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a high-level diagram showing parties or entities that caninteract with an advertising system.

FIG. 2 is a bubble chart of an exemplary advertising environment inwhich, or with which, the present invention may operate.

FIG. 3 illustrates an environment in which advertisers can target theirads on search results pages generated by a search engine and/ordocuments served by content servers.

FIG. 4 is a bubble chart of exemplary content-relevant ad servingoperations and information used or generated by such operations,consistent with the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a bubble chart of exemplary content-relevant ad servingoperations, document information gathering operations, and informationused or generated by such operations, consistent with the presentinvention.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method that may be used to getdocument information as a part of content-relevant ad serving operationsin a manner consistent with principles of the invention.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method that may be used toeffect targeted document information retrieval in a manner consistentwith principles of the invention.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method that may be used toeffect real-time document information retrieval in a manner consistentwith principles of the invention.

FIGS. 9A-9C illustrate parts of a Web page and various locations ofscript for extracting content of the Web page.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method that may be used todetermine root document location in a manner consistent with principlesof the present invention.

FIG. 11 is a high-level block diagram of apparatus that may be used toeffect at least some of the various operations that may be performed andstore at least some of the information that may be used and/or generatedconsistent with principles of the present invention.

FIGS. 12 and 13 are messaging diagrams illustrating alternative ways tocombine content-relevant ads with a document.

§ 4. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present invention may involve novel methods, apparatus, messageformats and/or data structures for allowing advertisers to put targeted,content-relevant ads on any page on the web (or some other document ofany media type). The following description is presented to enable oneskilled in the art to make and use the invention, and is provided in thecontext of particular applications and their requirements. Variousmodifications to the disclosed embodiments will be apparent to thoseskilled in the art, and the general principles set forth below may beapplied to other embodiments and applications. Thus, the presentinvention is not intended to be limited to the embodiments shown and theinventor regards his invention as any patentable subject matterdescribed.

In the following, environments in which, or with which, the presentinvention may operate are described in § 4.1. Then, exemplaryembodiments of the present invention are described in § 4.2. Examples ofoperations are provided in § 4.3 Finally, some conclusions regarding thepresent invention are set forth in § 4.4.

§ 4.1 Environments in which, or with which, the Present Invention mayOperate § 4.1.1 Exemplary Advertising Environment

FIG. 1 is a high level diagram of an advertising environment. Theenvironment may include an ad entry, maintenance and delivery system120. Advertisers 110 may directly, or indirectly, enter, maintain, andtrack ad information in the system 120. The ads may be in the form ofgraphical ads such as so-called banner ads, text only ads, image ads,audio ads, video ads, ads combining one of more of any of suchcomponents, etc. The ads may also include embedded information, such asa link, meta information, and/or machine executable instructions. Adconsumers 130 may submit requests for ads to, accept ads responsive totheir request from, and provide usage information to, the system 120.Although not shown, other entities may provide usage information (e.g.,whether or not a conversion or click-through related to the ad occurred)to the system 120. This usage information may include measured orobserved user behavior related to ads that have been served.

One example of an ad consumer 130 is a general content server thatreceives requests for content (e.g., articles, discussion threads,music, video, graphics, search results, web page listings, etc.), andretrieves the requested content in response to, or otherwise services,the request. The content server may submit a request for ads to thesystem 120. Such an ad request may include a number of ads desired. Thead request may also include content request information. Thisinformation may include the content itself (e.g., page), a categorycorresponding to the content or the content request (e.g., arts,business, computers, arts-movies, arts-music, etc.), part or all of thecontent request, content age, content type (e.g., text, graphics, video,audio, mixed media, etc.), geolocation information, etc.

The content server may combine the requested content with one or more ofthe advertisements provided by the system 120. This combined informationincluding the content and advertisement(s) is then forwarded towards theend user that requested the content, for presentation to the viewer.Finally, the content server may transmit information about the ads andhow, when, and/or where the ads are to be rendered (e.g., position,click-through or not, impression time, impression date, size, conversionor not, etc.) back to the system 120. Alternatively, or in addition,such information may be provided back to the system 120 by some othermeans.

Another example of an ad consumer 130 is a search engine. A searchengine may receive queries for search results. In response, the searchengine may retrieve relevant search results (e.g., from an index of Webpages). An exemplary search engine is described in the article S. Brinand L. Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine,”Seventh International World Wide Web Conference, Brisbane, Australia andin U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,999 (both incorporated herein by reference). Suchsearch results may include, for example, lists of Web page titles,snippets of text extracted from those Web pages, and hypertext links tothose Web pages, and may be grouped into a predetermined number of(e.g., ten) search results.

The search engine may submit a request for ads to the system 120. Therequest may include a number of ads desired. This number may depend onthe search results, the amount of screen or page space occupied by thesearch results, the size and shape of the ads, etc. In one embodiment,the number of desired ads will be from one to ten, and preferably fromthree to five. The request for ads may also include the query (asentered or parsed), information based on the query (such as geolocationinformation, whether the query came from an affiliate and an identifierof such an affiliate), and/or information associated with, or based on,the search results. Such information may include, for example,identifiers related to the search results (e.g., document identifiers or“docIDs”), scores related to the search results (e.g., informationretrieval (“IR”) scores such as dot products of feature vectorscorresponding to a query and a document, Page Rank scores, and/orcombinations of IR scores and Page Rank scores), snippets of textextracted from identified documents (e.g., WebPages), full text ofidentified documents, feature vectors of identified documents, etc.

The search engine may combine the search results with one or more of theadvertisements provided by the system 120. This combined informationincluding the search results and advertisement(s) is then forwardedtowards the user that requested the content, for presentation to theuser. Preferably, the search results are maintained as distinct from theads, so as not to confuse the user between paid advertisements andpresumably neutral search results.

Finally, the search engine may transmit information about the ad andwhen, where, and/or how the ad was to be rendered (e.g., position,click-through or not, impression time, impression date, size, conversionor not, etc.) back to the system 120. Alternatively, or in addition,such information may be provided back to the system 120 by some othermeans.

As can be appreciated from the foregoing, an ad entry, maintenance anddelivery system(s) 120 may server ad consumers 130 such as contentservers and search engines. As discussed in § 1.2 above, the serving ofads targeted to the search results page generated by a search engine isknown. The present invention further permits the serving of ads targetedto documents served by content servers. For example, referring to theexemplary environment of FIG. 3, a network or inter-network 360 mayinclude an ad server 320 serving targeted ads in response to requestsfrom a search engine 332 with ad spots for sale. Suppose that theinter-network 350 is the World Wide Web. The search engine 332 crawlsmuch or all of the content 350. Some 334 of this content 350 willinclude ad spots (also referred to as “inventory”) available. Morespecifically, one or more content servers 336 may include one or moredocuments 340. Documents may include content, embedded information suchas meta information and machine executable instructions, and ad spotsavailable. Note that ads inserted into ad spots in a document can varyeach time the document is served. Alternatively, ads inserted into adspots can have a static association with a given document. As will bedescribed in more detail below, an ad server may use the results of aseparate crawl of the some or all of the content with ad spots available334.

§ 4.1.2 Exemplary Ad Entry, Maintenance and Delivery Environment

FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary ad system 120′, consistent withprinciples of the present invention. The exemplary ad system 120′ mayinclude an inventory system 210 and may store ad information 205 andusage information 245. The exemplary system 120′ may support adinformation entry and management operations 215, campaign (e.g.,targeting) assistance operations 220, accounting and billing operations225, ad serving operations 230, relevancy determination operations 235,optimization operations 240, relative presentation attribute assignment(e.g., position ordering) operations 250, fraud detection operations255, and result interface operations 260.

Advertisers 110 may interface with the system 120′ via the adinformation entry and management operations 215 as indicated byinterface 216. Ad consumers 130 may interface with the system 120′ viathe ad serving operations 230 as indicated by interface 231. Adconsumers 130 and/or other entities (not shown) may also interface withthe system 120′ via results interface operations 260 as indicated byinterface 261.

An advertising program may include information concerning accounts,campaigns, creatives, targeting, etc. The term “account” relates toinformation for a given advertiser (e.g., a unique email address, apassword, billing information, etc.). A “campaign” or “ad campaign”refers to one or more groups of one or more advertisements, and mayinclude a start date, an end date, budget information, geo-targetinginformation, syndication information, etc. For example, Honda may haveone advertising campaign for its automotive line, and a separateadvertising campaign for its motorcycle line. The campaign for itsautomotive line have one or more ad groups, each containing one or moreads. Each ad group may include a set of keywords, and a maximum cost bid(cost per click-though, cost per conversion, etc.). Alternatively, or inaddition, each ad group may include an average cost bid (e.g., averagecost per click-through, average cost per conversion, etc.). Therefore, asingle maximum cost bid and/or a single average cost bid may beassociated with one or more keywords. As stated, each ad group may haveone or more ads or “creatives” (That is, ad content that is ultimatelyrendered to an end user.). Naturally, the ad information 205 may includemore or less information, and may be organized in a number of differentways.

The ad information 205 can be entered and managed via the ad informationentry and management operations 215. Campaign (e.g., targeting)assistance operations 220 can be employed to help advertisers 110generate effective ad campaigns. For example, the campaign assistanceoperations 220 can use information provided by the inventory system 210,which, in the context of advertising for use with a search engine, maytrack all possible ad impressions, ad impressions already reserved, andad impressions available for given keywords. The ad serving operations230 may service requests for ads from ad consumers 130. The ad servingoperations 230 may use relevancy determination operations 235 todetermine candidate ads for a given request. The ad serving operations230 may then use optimization operations 240 to select a final set ofone or more of the candidate ads. Finally, the ad serving operations 230may use relative presentation attribute assignment operations 250 toorder the presentation of the ads to be returned. The fraud detectionoperations 255 can be used to reduce fraudulent use of the advertisingsystem (e.g., by advertisers), such as through the use of stolen creditcards. Finally, the results interface operations 260 may be used toaccept result information (from the ad consumers 130 or some otherentity) about an ad actually served, such as whether or notclick-through occurred, whether or not conversion occurred (e.g.,whether the sale of an advertised item or service was initiated orconsummated within a predetermined time from the rendering of the ad),etc. Such results information may be accepted at interface 261 and mayinclude information to identify the ad and time the ad was served, aswell as the associated result.

§ 4.1.3 Definitions

Online ads, such as those used in the exemplary systems described abovewith reference to FIGS. 1 and 2, or any other system, may have variousfeatures. Such features may be specified by an application and/or anadvertiser. These features are referred to as “ad features” below. Forexample, in the case of a text ad, ad features may include a title line,ad text, executable code, an embedded link, etc. In the case of an imagead, ad features may additionally include images, etc. Depending on thetype of online ad, ad features may include one or more of the following:text, a link, an audio file, a video file, an image file, executablecode, embedded information, etc.

When an online ad is served, one or more parameters may be used todescribe how, when, and/or where the ad was served. These parameters arereferred to as “serving parameters” below. Serving parameters mayinclude, for example, one or more of the following: features of(including information on) a page on which the ad is served (includingone or more topics or concepts determined to be associated with thepage, information or content located on or within the page, informationabout the page such as the host of the page (e.g. AOL, Yahoo, etc.), theimportance of the page as measured by e.g. traffic, freshness, quantityand quality of links to or from the page etc., the location of the pagewithin a directory structure, etc.), a search query or search resultsassociated with the serving of the ad, a user characteristic (e.g.,their geographic location, the language they use, the type of browserused, previous page views, previous behavior), a host or affiliate site(e.g., America Online, Google, Yahoo) that initiated the request thatthe ad is served in response to, an absolute position of the ad on thepage on which it is served, a position (spatial or temporal) of the adrelative to other ads served, an absolute size of the ad, a size of thead relative to other ads, a color of the ad, a number of other adsserved, types of other ads served, time of day served, time of weekserved, time of year served, etc. Naturally, there are other servingparameters that may be used in the context of the invention.

Although serving parameters may be extrinsic to ad features, they may beassociated with an ad as conditions or constraints. When used as servingconditions or constraints, such serving parameters are referred tosimply as “serving constraints”. For example, in some systems, anadvertiser may be able to specify that its ad is only to be served onweekdays, no lower than a certain position, only to users in a certainlocation, etc. As another example, in some systems, an advertiser mayspecify that its ad is to be served only if a page or search queryincludes certain keywords or phrases.

“Ad information” may include any combination of ad features, ad servingconstraints, information derivable from ad features or ad servingconstraints (referred to as “ad derived information”), and/orinformation related to the ad (referred to as “ad related information”),as well as an extensions of such information (e.g., information derivedfrom ad related information).

A “document” is to be broadly interpreted to include anymachine-readable and machine-storable work product. A document may be afile, a combination of files, one or more files with embedded links toother files, etc.; the files may be of any type, such as text, audio,image, video, etc. Parts of a document to be rendered to an end user canbe thought of as “content” of the document. Ad spots in the document maybe defined by embedded information or instructions. In the context ofthe Internet, a common document is a Web page. Web pages often includecontent and may include embedded information (such as meta information,hyperlinks, etc.) and/or embedded instructions (such as Javascript,etc.). In many cases, a document has a unique, addressable, storagelocation and can therefore be uniquely identified by this addressablelocation. A universal resource locator (URL) is a unique address used toaccess information on the Internet.

“Document information” may include any information included in thedocument, information derivable from information included in thedocument (referred to as “document derived information”), and/orinformation related to the document (referred to as “document relatedinformation”), as well as an extensions of such information (e.g.,information derived from related information). An example of documentderived information is a classification based on textual content of adocument. Examples of document related information include documentinformation from other documents with links to the instant document, aswell as document information from other documents to which the instantdocument links.

Content from a document may be rendered on a “content renderingapplication or device”. Examples of content rendering applicationsinclude an Internet browser (e.g., Explorer or Netscape), a media player(e.g., an MP3 player, a Realnetworks streaming audio file player, etc.),a viewer (e.g., an Abobe Acrobat pdf reader), etc.

Various exemplary embodiments of the invention are now described in §4.2.

§ 4.2 Exemplary Embodiments

FIG. 4 is a bubble diagram of operations that may be performed andinformation that may be used or generated, in a manner consistent withthe principles of the present invention. Content-relevant ad servingoperations 410 may include relevance information extraction/generationoperations 412, ad-document relevance information comparison operations414 and ad(s)-document association operations 416. Responsive to arequest 420, or some other trigger event or condition, thecontent-relevant ad serving operations 410 can extract and/or generatedocument relevance information 434 and ad relevance information 444.(See operations 412.) Alternatively, such relevance information may havebeen extracted and/or generated, or otherwise provided before receipt ofthe request 420. That is, as indicated by the dotted arrows in FIG. 4,ad information and/or document information may be preprocessed todetermined ad relevance information 444 and/or document relevanceinformation 434. Exemplary techniques for extracting and/or generatingdocument relevance information 434 and ad relevance information 444 aredescribed in § 4.2.2 below. Then, the content-relevant ad servingoperations 410 can compare document relevance information 434 for agiven document (e.g., a document identified in request 420) 432 to adrelevance information 444 for one or more ads 442. (See operations 414.)Exemplary techniques for determining the relevance of ads to a documentare described in § 4.2.3 below. As a result of such comparisons, thecontent-relevant ad serving operations 410 can generate associations ofa document (e.g., via a document identifier or a request identifierassociated with a document) with one or more ads (e.g., via the aditself or an ad identifier). (See operations 416.) One such association450 is shown. Exemplary techniques for associating one or more ads witha document are described in § 4.2.3 below.

The content-relevant ad serving operations 410 may use stored data 430which includes a document identifier (such as a URL for a Web pagedocument for example) 432 and document relevance information 434. Asindicated by the arrow 460, document relevance information 434 may be,or may have been, generated based on document information. Exemplarytechniques for gathering document information are described in § 4.2.1below. The content-relevant ad serving operations 410 may also usestored data 440 which includes a number of entries, each entry includingan ad identifier 442 and ad relevance information 444. As indicated bythe arrow 470, ad relevance information 444 may be, or more have been,generated based on ad information.

Ultimately, one or more ads determined to be relevant to a document maybe combined with the document to be served. Exemplary techniques forcombining the one or more content-relevant ads with the document aredescribed in § 4.2.4 below.

§ 4.2.1 Increasing Inventory of Ad Spots —Obtaining Documents andExtracting and/or Generating Relevance Information

Referring to FIG. 4, recall that document relevance information 434 isdetermined from document information. Various ways of obtaining documentinformation are described in this section. Although many of thefollowing examples are described in the context of Web page documentsidentified by a URL, the present invention is not limited to theseexamples.

There are many ways to obtain the document information (e.g., Web pagecontents). First, for example, document information may be provided by athird party, such as a Web site host or ad consumer. Such provideddocument information may include the content (information) locatedwithin the document, or other information (e.g. a URL) that allows suchinformation to be obtained. Second, document information (e.g. Web pagecontents) may be obtained during an ad request; for example, an enduser's content rendering application (e.g., a browser) may be instructedto send document information (e.g., Web page contents) during an adrequest, or the document information may be fetched, for example, aspart of content relevant ad serving operations 410. Third, documentinformation (e.g., Web page contents) may be pre-fetched (i.e., obtainedbefore a specific request) for future content-relevant ad targeting.Moreover, other methods exist for obtaining document information, suchas for example the methods disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No.10/113,796 titled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR INCREASING EFFICIENCY FORELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DELIVERY TO USERS” filed Mar. 29, 2002, U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 09/734,886 titled “HYPERTEXT BROWSER ASSISTANT”filed Dec. 13, 2000, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/734,901titled “SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PERFORMING IN-CONTEXT SEARCHING” filedDec. 13, 2000, each of which is herein incorporated by reference.

FIG. 5 is a bubble diagram of an exemplary embodiment 500 of operationsthat may be performed and information that may be used or generated whenobtaining documents for increasing ad inventory, in a manner consistentwith the principles of the present invention. Content-relevant adserving operations 510 serve requests for document information (or adinformation) and may include document information request distributionand reply combination operations 515. (Note that ad information, or adrelevance information, as well as operations such as relevanceinformation extraction/generation operations 412, ad-document relevanceinformation comparison operations 414 and ad(s)-document associationoperations 416 are not shown in FIG. 5 to simplify the Figure.) Theseoperations 515 may be used if multiple sources of available(pre-fetched) document information 520 (or ad information) are to beconsidered. Sources of document information may include one or more ofcached document information 530, a larger set of “untargeted” documentinformation 540, and a smaller set of “targeted” document information550. Generally, a crawl (or some other manner of retrieval) of targeteddocuments will be “deeper” (e.g., crawl further down into thehierarchical Web pages of a Website) than an untargeted crawl, which mayonly perform a shallow crawl of a given Web site. As indicated by thearrows at the left margin of FIG. 5, requests for document (or ad)information are advanced down the double arrow lines in the Figure, andreplies responsive to such requests are advanced up the double arrowlines in the Figure.

Documents with static information or relatively static information canbe fetched in advance (pre-fetched), but may be fetched in real-time,for example on-demand in response to a request. On the other hand, itmay be preferable to fetch documents with dynamic information inreal-time, responsive to a request.

§ 4.2.1.1 Pre-Fetching Documents

The cached document information 530 may include document information forrecently and/or frequently requested documents.

The larger set of “untargeted” document information 540 may have beenbuilt, and may be updated, using a search engine crawler 560. Anexemplary search engine crawler 560 is described in U.S. Pat. No.6,285,999, which is incorporated herein by reference. Althoughinformation about a large set of documents is available, informationabout a particular document needed might not be available. In this case,in a so-called nonblocking implementation of the present invention(where the content-relevant ad request serving operations do not wait toget document information if it has not been previously obtained andpresently stored), a request for ads for a document without availabledocument information might be provided with so-called “house ads” (adsfor the ad server itself, ads shown for free, or some other ads thatdon't generate revenue), or with random ads or generally well performingads if ad revenue is based on a user action (e.g., a click-through or aconversion). (Note that if random ads or generally well performing adsare served in such an untargeted way, their performance statistics, ifany, should not be affected. Alternatively, it may be desirable that,when a request for ads for a document without normally availabledocument information is received, a “best guess” is made to estimatedocument information. Such an estimate might be made by, for example,examining the document's location within a directory structure and usinginformation from the directory (categories) or from other documents inthe same, similar, or higher (broader) or lower (narrower)classification. One could also examine a log of search queries thatgenerated search results including or traffic to the document, and fromthe search queries discern alternative documents related to the documentin question. It is further possible that, in such a situation, the Website host of the document is contacted and provides the information.

The smaller set of “targeted” document information 550 may be obtainedand maintained in one or more of a number of ways. For example, targeteddocument information retrieval (e.g., crawling) operations 580 may beused to crawl particular content provider Websites, such as partnerWebsites 588. Some or all of the partner Websites may have been enteredvia content provider input interface operations 585. Alternatively, orin addition, a content provider, such as a Web publisher, can itselfprovide document information (e.g., Web pages or URLs of newly added Webpages) 550 directly via content provider input interface operations 585.

A self service syndication method can allow content providers such aspublishers to sign up to put content-relevant ads on their Websitethrough a fast, easy and standard process. One specific example of sucha self service syndication method may support one or more of thefollowing:

-   -   (i) Publisher goes to login page/new user page.    -   (ii) Publisher clicks on new user.    -   (iii) Publisher fills out its name, who it wants the check        written to, address where it wants the check sent, site domain,        contact information, (social security number or tax id number,        password with email login, etc.). This information may be        reviewed against a standard checklist to ensure that the entered        Website is a real Website.    -   (iv) The entered Website may then be approved or denied.    -   (v) Email may be sent to the publisher    -   (vi) If approved, the publisher may be instructed to accept a        service agreement and click on a link which takes them to a        login page.    -   (vii) Once logged in, the publisher can download a piece of code        for a horizontal (486×60) or vertical (660×120) ads with a        unique identifier. In one embodiment, unique pieces of code are        provided for different ad servers.    -   (viii) Publisher may then put the code in their ad server. Other        self service features may support:    -   (i) Publisher can log into its account to see how much money it        has earned. Reports may include date, page views, revenue        earned, etc.    -   (ii) Publisher may be given the option to include URLs they want        to block for ads.    -   (iii) Publisher may be paid periodically (e.g., each month) for        the ads shown on their Website, possibly subject to the ad being        selected and/or a conversion.    -   (iv) Publisher should have way to change their contact        information. It is desirable to allow a content-relevant ad        server administrator to:    -   (i) See where a specific publisher is showing ads.    -   (ii) Generate revenue per publisher/all publisher report for any        timeframe.    -   (iii) Mark publisher as fraudulent.    -   (iv) Mark who was paid.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method 600 that may be used toget document information as a part of content-relevant ad servingoperations in a manner consistent with principles of the invention. Thedocument identifier (e.g., URL) is accepted. (Block 610) It is thendetermined if-the document relevance information is available. (Decisionblock 620) If the document relevance is available (referred to as a“hit”), the ad serving processing continues using the document relevanceinformation. If, on the other hand, the document relevance informationis not available, it is determined whether document information isavailable (e.g., in the cache 530, the main repository 540, and/or theCRAS repository 550). (Block 630) If so, document relevance informationis extracted and/or generated using the document information (Block 640)and the ad serving processing continues. If not (referred to below as a“miss”), it may be determined whether or not the content provider (e.g.,a partner) has documents that can be easily retrieved (e.g., crawled) ornot. (Block 640) In the context of Web sites, a Web site may beconsidered to be difficult to crawl if (a) the content is dynamicallyassembled, (b) the content frequently changes or is frequently refreshed(e.g., news or stocks), and/or (c) the Web site has many alternatives(e.g., people finders). If the content provider is harder to crawl, andit has properly embedded script or links in their content, executableinstructions (e.g., Javascript) may be used to get document information(Block 645) before the method 600 continues at block 640. If the contentprovider is easier to crawl, is is determined whether thecontent-relevant ad server is configured to use blocking or non-blockingad serving. (Decision block 650) If the type is blocking, the documentinformation is retrieved immediately (Block 660) and the method 600either continues at block 640. If, on the other hand, the type isnonblocking, the document identifier (e.g., URL) is stored (e.g., to alog of unfilled requests 570) for later retrieval. (Block 670)Alternative ad serving may then be performed. (Block 675). Note that, ifthe document relevance information is not available, a “best guess” mayalso be used, as disclosed previously.

Referring again to FIG. 5, the targeted document information retrieval(e.g., crawling) operations 580 may then processes the logs of unfilledrequest(s) 570 (and identifiers, such as URLs, of (partner) contentprovider Web sites provided by an external source, such as a (partner)content provider Web site) and retrieves related document informationinto the CRAS repository 550 for future use. The targeted crawlingoperations 580 may also be used to pre-crawl Web pages for a givenWebsite to “pre-warm” the CRAS repository 550. This helps to ensure thatcontent-relevant ads will be available.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method 700 that may be used toeffect targeted document information retrieval in a manner consistentwith principles of the invention. In response to some trigger event 710,the document identifiers are accepted. (Block 730) For each documentidentifier (Loop 730-750), document information for the identifieddocument is retrieved. (Block 740)

In the case of Web page documents identified by URLs, the URLs of suchWeb pages may include information that varies across sessions used todistinguish different sessions on the same Web page. Such additionalinformation, such as sessionids, shopperids, etc., are often appended tothe URL. However, when stripped on this additional information, a givenURL will address the same Web page content. If session information werenot removed from a URL, stored document information associated with theURL without the session information might not be found using the URLwith the session information as a key. That is, even though the Web pagecontent (or some other document information) is already available, itmight be considered to be unavailable due to the session information inthe URL. Document identifier (URL) rewrite operations 595 may beprovided to strip such session information from URLs and make themcanonical for purposes of providing search keys to store and lookupdocument information stored in the repositories 540,550 and the cache530.

The targeted document information retrieval operations 580 may work incooperation and conjunction with the search engine crawler 560 (whichmay complete a crawl of the Web less frequently). For example, in oneembodiment, it may be desired to have the targeted document informationretrieval operations 580 be a Web crawler that works with a small numberof Web pages per day (e.g., <2.5 M Web pages/day). In such anembodiment, it 580 may be used primarily as a supplement to the searchengine crawler 560 to meet freshness criteria and/or to reduce time lagto launch a partner site. It may be desirable to pass as much of theongoing workload to the search engine crawler 560 as possible. In suchas case, it may be desirable (i) to write to a log the URLs for whichthere is no document information stored, (ii) for the search enginecrawler 560 to pick up the document information and supplement its ownrepository 540. Over time, the main repository 540 should have more ofthe document information that will be needed.

§ 4.2.1.2 Real-Time Fetching

There is often content that can not be crawled. Dynamic Web pages, suchas those generated using a search engine, are one such example. Otherexamples include pages generated by filling forms, personalized pages,pages that require a login and password, etc. Real-time documentinformation extraction operations 590 may be used to extract contents ofsuch Web pages, as well as Web pages that haven't been pre-fetched, but(the context of which) are needed. In one embodiment, the documentinformation (e.g., contents) are extracted using embedded instructions(e.g., Javascript) included in a document. More specifically, theembedded instructions (e.g., Javascript) may send some of all of thedocument information (e.g., content) to the content-relevant ad servingoperations 410 to get one or more targeted ads for the dynamic document.“Interesting” document information to be extracted a Web page couldinclude meta tags, headers, titles, etc. The content extraction andfetching occur in. real-time.

In one embodiment of the invention, Javascript is used in the context ofa proxy. This Javascript extracts “interesting” document informationsuch as meta tags, header, titles, etc., from any Web page it isavailable on. A target page could include the following Javascript asembedded instructions: <iframe id=‘google_ads_frame’ src=‘about:blank’hight=80 ... > ... content of the page .... <script> extract importantkey words like title, meta tags, headers etc, till we have reached 1Kbyte limit.frames[‘google_ads_frame’].src=http://pagead.google.com/ads?url=<url>&contents=word1+word2+.... </script>Setting the URL of the iframe instructs the browser to reload the frame.This Javascript could be provided to content servers for insertion intoall their Web pages.

Although the foregoing embodiment of a real-time document informationextraction operations 590 is useful, it has some disadvantages. First,this Javascript is rather large and could be slow to execute on aper-page basis. Second, changes to improve the actual Javascript overtime (e.g., with respect to what content it extracts and how) would haveto be accepted and implemented by content providers, withoutunintentionally modifying it. Thus, generally, with such animplementation, the bigger the Javascript and the more often it isupdated, the more likely there may be different, incompatible versionsbeing used.

One alternative to embedded Javascript is to provide astatic Javascriptlink. More specifically, to avoid increasing the size of each Web pageby 4KBytes or so by embedding Javascript, a link to a static Javascriptpage can be used instead. The following is an example of a link to astatic javascript page: <script src=pagead.google.com/ads/scrape.js></script>Since most browsers will cache this Javascript link, the actualJavascript will only be fetched infrequently.

A second alternative avoids sending 1KBype of content unconditionally tothe content-relevant ad serving operations 410 for all the Web pageviews by using a two-phase model. In the first phase, it is attempted toserve one or more ads using document information already stored (e.g.,at cache 530, main repository 540 and/or CRAS repository 550) withoutsending the content to the content-relevant ad serving operations 410.If the document information is not already there, in the second phase,Javascript is provided to the browser which will send the ‘interesting’content for the Web page for purposes of targeting ads. For example, atarget page may include the following: <iframe id=‘google_ads_frame’src=http://pagead.google.com/ads?url=document.location> </iframe>

This iframe can get one or more content-relevant ad if documentinformation or document relevance information (e.g., content) isavailable. Otherwise, the iframe will get a Javascript that will fetchthe document relevance information (e.g., contents). This scheme mightnot work well because of Javascript's ‘Same Origin Policy’. The sameorigin policy implies that a frame in one domain (e.g.,pagead.google.com) can not read contents of other domain (e.g.,aol.com). Accordingly, the above two-phase approach may be modified asfollows: <iframe id=‘google_ads_frame’src=http://pagead.google.com/ads?url=document.location> </iframe> ....Contents of the page .... <scriptsrc=http://pagead.google.com/ads?url=document.location&js_request =true></script>Here, iframe will try to fetch one or more ads as before. If no documentinformation, or document relevance information (e.g., content) isavailable, a house ad, or a blank ad, or an ad saying “place your adhere”, may be returned. Script in the footer of the Web page issues itsown parallel request with a special boolean ‘js_request’ flag set to“true”. There are two possible responses to this request. First, a“null” response can occur when document information, or documentrelevance information (e.g., content) is available in cache 530 (or,alternatively, in cache 530, main repository 540, or CRAS repository550) in which case the iframe would have already loaded one or moretargeted ads. Second, a “Javascript to read the contents” response canoccur when document information, or document relevance information(e.g., content) is not available in cache 530 (or, alternatively, incache 530, main repository 540, or CRAS repository 550). In this secondcase, a script that will extract the document information (e.g.,contents) or document relevance information as before is sent over tothe browser and the iframe URL is set with the contents. Iframe willthen fetch the targeted ads.

The two-phase approach is sometimes inefficient because the wholeJavascript is sent to the browser when document information (content),or document relevance information is not available in cache 530 (or,alternatively, in cache 530, main repository 540 or CRAS repository550). A third alternative is a three-phase Javascript which correspondsto the two-phase Javascript, with static link. This three-phaseapproaches exploits the browser's cache by returning a link to staticJavascript to the browser. The browser will load the full Javascriptonly if necessary.

The three-phase approach always issues two requests to thecontent-relevant ad serving operations 410. Since these requests are inparallel they don't affect the end user latency. However, this causesadditional backend load. Such additional backend load might beacceptable, however, since the second request in the 3-phase approach isrelatively cheap to handle.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method 800 that may be used toeffect real-time document information retrieval in a manner consistentwith principles of the invention. Both the two-phase and three-phasemethods are shown. In response to a received request for an executable(e.g., Javascript) (Block 810), it is determined whether or not thedocument information is already available (e.g., at cache 530, or cache530, main repository 540, or CRAS repository 550). (Decision block 820)If the document information is already available, an empty executable(e.g., empty script) is returned to the content rendering application(e.g., browser) that requested the executable (Block 850) before themethod 800 is left (Node 860). If, on the other hand, the documentinformation is not available, an executable for reading documentinformation (e.g., Javascript) is returned (two-phase model), or a linkto the executable for reading document information is returned(three-phase model), to the content rendering application (e.g.,browser) that requested the executable (Block 830) and the documentidentifier is set to address the proper document information (e.g., adsiframe URL is reset to include page content) (Block 840) before themethod 800 is left (Node 860).

A fourth alternative is a four-phase approach which avoids alwaysissuing two requests by implementing the following trick. Iframe part isas before: The Javascript at the footer will try to read the contents ofthis iframe to figure out if it is showing the right ad. Iframe will getredirected to about:blank (which serves a blank ad, or an ad saying“place your ad here”) if there is no document information or documentrelevance information (e.g., content) for the document available incache 530. In this case, the Javascipt can read the contents of thisiframe because it is not in a different domain. The existence of asecurity exception implies that the iframe has a good ad. Otherwise, theJavascript will get the document information or document relevanceinformation (e.g., content) and get one or more targeted ads. However,the four-phase approach is a bit trickier to implement and requires someadditional features of browsers (redirect, onload).

If it is assumed that (i) Javascipt size is 4KB, (ii) the size of anyURL with contents is 1KB, (iii) browser caching hit rate is 90%, (iv)cached document information hit rate is 95%, and (v) browser cache hitrates and cached document information hit rates are independent, thethree-phase technique offers a favorable combination of latency andbandwidth performance.

If, however, ad statistics are tracked, special considerations may beneeded to get the actual number of Web page views seen. Morespecifically, if the document information or document relevanceinformation (e.g., content) is not available in cache 530 (or in cache530, main repository 540, or CRAS repository 550), two ad requests areissued. Consequently, page views could be overestimated which wouldcorrupt many important stats like revenue per thousand impressions(RPM), etc. Although it is possible to not show ads (or show a staticad) in the iframe when the document information or document relevanceinformation (e.g., content) is not there, this will corrupt statisticsfor pages that don't have the Javascript at the footer. Some contentproviders will not allow such a footer Javascript on privacy sensitivepages. One way to solve this challenge would be to add an additionalflag in the iframe's URL to distinguish pages that do not have thefooter Javascript.

Although the implementations described above used Javascript, thepresent invention is not limited to Javascript and may use some otherscript or executable. Moreover, in another alternative, a toolbar/clientcan be added to user's content rendering application (e.g., browser/OS)which can send the document information (e.g., Web page content) to thead server. In yet another alternative, an http proxy may be used tosnoop on all the document information (e.g., content) that goes to auser. This proxy can then send this document information to the adserver.

§ 4.2.1.2.1 Universal Root Document Locator

In the context of Web pages, to target ads based on the content of theWeb page, to fetch the document information (e.g., content) of the Webpage, the URL of the Web page where the ads are to appear is needed.FIG. 9A illustrates a Web page 900 with one or more ad spots. The Webpage 900 includes content 910 and has a URL_(MP) 915. The Web page 900may also include one or more iframes 920 a,920 b, each iframe includingits own URL 925 a,925 b. If script (or a pointer to script), such asthat described above, is to be provided to allow the content-relevant adserver to fetch document information (e.g., content) of the Web page900, a potential problem arises since the URL_(MP) 915 of the main pagemay be different from those URLs 925 a,925 b of one or more iframes 920a,920 b. More specifically, as shown in FIG. 9C, some content providerpartners might place the script (or a pointer to the script) 930′directly on the main page 900” while, as shown in FIG. 9B, others mayencapsulate the script (or a pointer to the script) 930 a or 930 binside an iframe 920 a or 920 b with a different URL_(IF1) 925 a′ orURL_(IF2) 925 b′ from the URL_(MP) 915′ parent Web page 900′. If thescript 930′ is in the main Web page, such as shown in FIG. 9C, a firstJavascript attribute, “document.location”, is used to identify thelocation (URL_(MP)) 915“of the main Web page 900”. If, on the otherhand, the script 930 a or 930 b is in an iframe 920 a or 920 b, such asshown in FIG. 9B, a second Javascript attribute, “document.referrer”, isused to identify the location (URL_(MP)) 915′ of the main Web page 900”,instead of returning the URL_(IF1) 925 a′ or URL_(IF2) 925 b′ of theiframe. Variants such as “window.document.location”, etc., may be usedinstead. In any event, in order for the script to get the appropriatedocument information (e.g., content 910), it needs the proper URL_(MP)and therefore needs to know which of the two methods—document.locationor document.referrer—to use. Although different content providerpartners could be provided with different Javascript for use in thesetwo cases, doing so complicates matters and relies on partners to usethe right script for the right page.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method 1000 for determiningwhich of the two root document determination methods to use, in a mannerconsistent with the principles of the present invention. This method1000 leverages the iframe security model and Javascript exceptionhandling. Comparing the ad location (“document.location”) with the mainpage (“window.top.location”) is attempted. (Block 1010) If they are thesame, the “document.location” method is used to determine the rootdocument. (Blocks 1020 and 1030) If they are not the same, thecomparison either fails (if the main page and iframe are in the samedomain), or generates a security violation exception (an iframe may notexamine values outside of itself). In the event of a mismatch orexception, the “document.referrer” method is used to identify the rootdocument (main page) location. (Blocks 1020 and 1040) This use ofexception handling with iframe security models provides a powerful andnovel way to determine the main page URL_(MP).

In one embodiment, the Javascript “onerror” exception handling is used.An alternative approach would be to employ “try/catch” exceptionhandling.

§ 4.2.1.3 Alternative Ways of Obtaining Document Information

There can be several alternative implementations of the fetch-on-missscheme described in § 4.2.1.1 above. Such alternatives can be achievedby combining the following implementation options in different ways:

1. When to fetch document information

-   -   a) fetch before request (pre-fetch)    -   b) fetch-on-miss during request (ondemand blocking fetch)    -   c) fetch-on-miss after request (on-demand nonblocking fetch)        2. What document information to fetch    -   a) fetch just the Web page itself    -   b) fetch the Web page and follow its links        3. How to fetch    -   a) use a separate crawler    -   b) fetcher embedded in the content-relevant ad targeting system.        The implementation described above uses a separate crawler        (Recall 580 of FIG. 5.) and fetches the Web page and its links        before a request (pre-fetch). If document information needed to        processes a request is not available, the Web page is fetched        after the request has already been served (e.g., by providing no        ads or “house ads”. (Recall blocks 670 and 675 of FIG. 6, and        FIG. 7.) However, there can be other variations.

The document information may be subject to further processing after itis fetched.

§ 4.2.2 Determining Relevance Information for Ads and/or Content

Referring back to FIG. 4, recall that content-relevant ad servingoperations 410 may include relevance information extraction and/orgeneration operations 412. Various way of extracting and/or generatingrelevance information are described in U.S. Provisional ApplicationSerial No. 60/413,536, entitled “METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR SERVINGRELEVANT ADVERTISEMENTS”, filed on Sept. 24, 2002 and listing Jeffrey A.Dean, Georges R. Harik and Paul Bucheit as inventors, and in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 10/314,427, entitled “METHODS AND APPARATUS FORSERVING RELEVANT ADVERTISEMENTS”, filed on Dec. 6, 2002 and listingJeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik and Paul Bucheit as inventors. Both ofthese applications are incorporated herein by reference. Theseapplications are referred to collectively as “the relevant ad serverapplications”) Relevance information may be considered as a topic orcluster to which an ad or document belongs. U.S. Provisional ApplicationSerial No. 60/416,144, entitled “.Methods and Apparatus forProbabilistic Hierarchical Inferential Learner” filed on Oct. 3, 2002(incorporated herein by reference) describes exemplary ways to determineone or more concepts or topics (referred to as “phil clusters”) ofinformation that may be used consistent with the principles of thepresent invention.

In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, off-line (perhapsnightly), a dump of a complete ads database is used to generate an indexthat maps topics (e.g., a phil cluster identifiers) to a set of matchingad groups. This may be done using one or more of (i) a set of servingconstraints (targeting criteria) within the ad group, (ii) text of theads within the ad group, (iii) content on the advertiser's Web site,etc.

§ 4.2.3 Associating Content with Relevant Ads

Recall from FIG. 4 that content-relevant ad serving operations 410 mayinclude ad-document relevance information comparison operations 414 andad(s)-document association operations 416. Various similaritytechniques, such as those described in the relevant ad serverapplications, may be used to determined a degree of similarity betweenan ad and a document. Such similarly techniques may use the extractedand/or generated relevance information. One or more content-relevant adsmay then be associated with a document based on the similaritydeterminations. For example, an ad may be associated with a document ifits degree of similarity exceeds some absolute and/or relativethreshold.

In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, a document may beassociated with one or more ads by mapping a document identifier (e.g.,a URL) to one or more ads. For example, the document information mayhave been processed to generate relevance information, such as a cluster(e.g., a phil cluster), a topic, etc. The matching clusters may then beused as query terms in a large OR query to an index that maps topics(e.g., a phil cluster identifiers) to a set of matching ad groups, suchas one determined as described in § 4.2.2. The results of this query maythen be used as first cut set of candidate targeting criteria. Thecandidate ad groups may then be sent to the relevance informationextraction and/or generation operations (e.g., a phil server) again todetermine an actual information retrieval (IR) score for each ad groupsummarizing how well the criteria information plus the ad text itselfmatches the document relevance information. Estimated or knownperformance parameters (e.g., click-through rates, conversion rates,etc.) for the ad group may be considered in helping determine the bestscoring ad group.

Once a set of best ad groups have been selected, a final set of one ormore ads may be selected using a list of criteria from the best adgroup(s). The content-relevant an ad server can use this list to requestthat an ad be sent back if K of the M criteria sent match a single adgroup. If so, the ad is provided to the requestor.

Performance information (e.g., a history of selections or conversionsper URL or per domain) may be fed back in the system, so that clustersor Web pages that tend to get better performance for particular kinds ofads (e.g., ads belonging to a particular cluster or topic) may bedetermined. This can be used to re-rank content-relevant ads such thatthe ads served are determined using some function of bothcontent-relevance and performance. A number of performance optimizationsmay be used. For example, the mapping from URL to the set of ad groupsthat are relevant may be cached to avoid re-computation for frequentlyviewed pages.

§ 4.2.4 Combining Relevant Ads with an Associated Document

Content-relevant ads can be combined with an associated document aheadof time, or on-demand, in real-time. Such combination may be performedby (a) the content-relevant ad server, (b) the content provider, or (c)the end user's content rendering application (e.g., browser).

§ 4.2.5 Exemplary Ad Server Using the Principles of the PresentInvention

If the present invention is to be used in an ad server, a number of thefollowing components may be provided.

§ 4.2.5.1 Accounting and Billing

In one embodiment of the invention, each syndication partner (e.g., acontent provider) may be assigned a different billing identifier. The adsystem may track impression and performance information (e.g.,selections, conversions, etc.) on a per-client basis, particularly ifthere are a reasonable number of syndication partners.

§ 4.2.5.2 Reporting to Advertisers

In one embodiment of the invention, an advertiser may be provided with asummary including which of its ads were shown on which Web sites or Webpages.

§ 4.2.5.3 Serving Ads Across Multiple Web Sites

In one embodiment of the invention, advertisers may have no control overwhere their ads shown—on an Web page, on the search results pagegenerated by a search engine, etc. In a refined embodiment of thepresent invention, advertisers can control how their ads are served.Such control may be effected by allowing the advertiser to opt-in,opt-out, manipulate bidding or budgeting controls, etc. For example, abinary opt-in/opt-out choice may be made by the advertiser, or inferredby the advertiser's inaction. Alternatively, advertisers can be providedwith the ability to provide a second price (and possibly additionalprices) for each ad group that they would be willing to pay for “clickson content-relevance-based targeted pages” (which could becontent-relevance-based ads, or ads on search pages that match theconcept of their targeting criteria but not the actual keywords). Inthis alternative scheme, advertisers could completely opt out by bidding0 for results (e.g., clicks, conversions, etc.).

§ 4.2.5.4 Filtering of Ads

In one embodiment of the invention, it may be desirable to control orfilter the rendering of ads shown in conjunction with certain documents.For example, ad syndication partners may be provided some control overthe ads shown in conjunction with their documents (e.g., shown on or inconjunction with their Web site or Web page). One simple way ofproviding such control would be to permit the syndication partners touse a blacklist of URLs for advertisers (e.g., competitors, unreputablefirms, etc.), or terms of ads (e.g., inappropriate products, services,or terms), that should not be allowed. More specifically, advertisersmay be allowed to associate “negative keywords” with an advertisement oradvertising campaign, where advertisements are only shown if asearch-engine query does NOT match the negative keywords. For example, apercussion instrument store might choose to advertise on the keyword“drums”, but might choose to use the negative keyword “ears”, so thatthey didn't match queries like “ear drums”. This approach is fairlylabor intensive and error-prone. In one embodiment of the invention,content publishers or advertiser are permitted to specify negativepreferences in several ways.

First, they can be permitted to select an option that says “Nocompetitor ads”. In a refinement of this embodiment, the competitors ofa given advertiser or publisher can be automatically identified byanalyzing the textual content of their Website, advertisements, and/ortargeting criteria compared with other advertisers, and also analyze thelink structure surrounding a page to identify additional competitors orrelated pages for which advertisements should not be shown.

Second, they can be permitted to select an option that says “Noadvertisements related to this text or URL(s)”, where the text could bea few words, or it could be an entire web site. If the user specifies aURL, the page can then be fetched from the Website hosting the URL andthe contents of the Web page can be used in addition to the URL toderive more text. Fetching related pages, such as the pages pointed toby the original URL(s), or pages on the same host, or related pagesidentified by co-citation or other algorithms for identifying relatedpages from a URL can also be considered. Given a set of text, aclustering system such as the one introduced above, can be used toderive a set of clusters or topics that are related to the negativetext. For example, the percussion store might specify “ear drums” asnegative text, and this could be generalized into all “concepts” relatedto ears, hearing loss, etc. The generalization could be done in avariety of ways, including via a Bayesian network looking forhigher-thannormal co-occurrence of words in queries or documents thatmatch the given negative text. This might expand “ear drums” into acluster of related phrases such as: # ear ringing # ear buzzing # earwax buildup # patulous eustachian tube # human ear diagram # earblockage # eustation tube # ear pressure # ear noise # middle ear fluid# ear pain # ear lavage # ear popping # eustachian tube dysfunction #pain in ear # ear fullness # ear tube. Clusters of concepts/relatedwords that should not match can also be identified. For example “eardrums” might expand into a cluster of related words and associatedprobabilities (show in parentheses): Activated Outlink Sum: 0.59460114971 ear (0.090718,inf) lm 7434 hearing (0.0450492,inf) lm 4509hearing-loss (0.0273237,inf) lm 2735 ears (0.0165727,inf) lm 1358inner-ear (0.00822975,inf) lm 1358 deafness (0.00822975,inf) lm 1501tinnitus (0.00909528,inf) lm 823 audiogram (0.00499159,inf) lm 823middle-ear (0.00499159,inf) lm 1833 problems (0.011109,inf) lm 745ear-infection (0.00451658,inf) lm 1006 noise (0.00609675,inf) lm 910fluid (0.00551656,inf) lm 910 damage (0.00551656,inf) lm 552ear-infections (0.00334597,inf) lm 552 audiology (0.00334597,inf) lm 409sensorineuraphearing-loss (0.00247875,inf) lm 745 loss (0.00451658,inf)lm 370 glue-ear (0.00224287,inf) lm 452 auditory (0.00273944,inf) lm 409otitis-media (0.00247875,inf) lm 370 acoustic-neuroma (0.00224287,inf)lm 303 conductive-hearing-loss (0.0018363,inf) lm 452 loud(0.00273944,inf) lm 303 audiometry (0.0018363,inf) lm 1006 test(0.00609675,inf) lm 274 in-the-ears (0.00166156,inf) lm 303 fullness(0.0018363,inf) lm 334 ear-wax (0.00202943,inf) lm 823 sound(0.00499159,inf lm 552 pressure (0.00334597,inf) lm 274 otosclerosis(0.00166156,inf) lm 274 ear-drum (0.00166156,inf) lm 274 cholesteatoma(0.00166156,inf) lm 452 canal (0.00273944,infl) lm 370 ent(0.00224287,inf) lm 224 sensorineural (0.00136037,inf) lm Once thisexpansion has been done, it can be used to either transparently suppressadvertisements that have a strong association with the given cluster, orit could be used in an iterative system, by showing advertisers orpublishers the kinds of content/advertisements that would be suppressedby an existing set of rules, and allowing them to iteratively refine thematching rules.

Third, an advertiser or publisher could be allowed to suppress ads thatare perform poorly (e.g., that are below a given performance parametersuch as clickthrough rate, conversion rate, etc. or below a giveneffective cost per impression (clickthrough rate times cost per click).

§ 4.2.5.5 Imposing Serving Limits on Otherwise Content-Relevant Ads

In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, showing the samead to the same user more than a predetermined number of times over apredetermined time period (e.g., once per day), or some similarheuristic is avoided. Otherwise, in the context of the Internet, if auser surfs around a number of Web pages with similar content, they arelikely to see the same ad repeatedly, which may hurt performance of thead.

§ 4.2.5.6 Gathering Statistics

In one embodiment of the present invention, content-ads servingstatistics are gathered (e.g., for system debugging, revenue projection,customer report and billing, etc.). In one embodiment, one or more ofthe following statistics: <12 page views> <12 page views with real ads><$ money spent (for buying page views)> <12 ads shown> <12 real adsshown> <$ money made (from ads clicks)> <% clickthrough> <$ rpm>are determined. Such statistics may be determined on a per-partnerbasis:

A separate log concentrator and ads database may be used for collectingand storing these statistics.

As discussed above, for content-relevant-ads serving, it may bedesirable to show canned “house ads” when there are no ads determined tobe relevant to a document. This may be done to fully exploitpre-purchased properties; namely documents with pre-purchased ad spots.To be able to distinguish statistics for both types of ads (e.g., houseads vs. ads determined to be relevant), in an ads database, twosub-properties are created for each content-relevant-ads property, onefor each ad type (real or house ads). For example, the Web propertywww.ezboard.com may be split into two sub-properties: (i) ca-ezboard and(ii) ca-ezboard:default. When sending an ads request, thecontent-ads-server chooses which sub-property to use based on the webproperty and the ads type.

§ 4.2.6 Exemplary Apparatus

FIG. 11 is high-level block diagram of a machine 100 that may effect oneor more of the operations discussed above. The machine 1100 basicallyincludes one or more processors 1110, one or more input/output interfaceunits 1130, one or more storage devices 1120, and one or more systembuses and/or networks 1140 for facilitating the communication ofinformation. among the coupled elements. One or more input devices 1132and one or more output devices 1134 may be coupled with the one or moreinput/output,interfaces 1130.

The one or more processors 1110 may execute machine-executableinstructions (e.g., C or C++ running on the Solaris operating systemavailable from Sun Microsystems Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. or the Linuxoperating system widely available from a number of vendors such as RedHat, Inc. of Durham, N.C.) to effect one or more aspects of the presentinvention. At least a portion of the machine executable instructions maybe stored (temporarily or more permanently) on the one or more storagedevices 1120 and/or may be received from an external source via one ormore input interface units 1130.

In one embodiment, the machine 1100 may be one or more conventionalpersonal computers. In this case, the processing units 1110 may be oneor more microprocessors. The bus 1140 may include a system bus. Thestorage devices 1120 may include system memory, such as read only memory(ROM) and/or random access memory (RAM). The storage devices 1120 mayalso include a hard disk drive for reading from and writing to a harddisk, a magnetic disk drive for reading from or writing to a (e.g.,removable) magnetic disk, and an optical disk drive for reading from orwriting to a removable (magneto-) optical disk such as a compact disk orother (magneto-) optical media.

A user may enter commands and information into the personal computerthrough input devices 1132, such as a keyboard and pointing device(e.g., a mouse) for example. Other input devices such as a microphone, ajoystick, a game pad, a satellite dish, a scanner, or the like, may also(or alternatively) be included. These and other input devices are oftenconnected to the processing unit(s) 1110 through an appropriateinterface 1130 coupled to the system bus 1140. The output devices 1134may include a monitor or other type of display device, which may also beconnected to the system bus 1140 via an appropriate interface. Inaddition to (or instead of) the monitor, the personal computer mayinclude other (peripheral) output devices (not shown), such as speakersand printers for example.

§ 4.2.7 Serving of the Ads

There are many ways in which ads determined to be relevant based on theforegoing methods may be served in conjunction with documents. Forexample, Web sites often show advertisements in the form of banner ads.When showing an ad consistent with the present invention, ads may beplaced into a form that may be shown in such a banner position. Forexample, an ad may be converted into an image of the appropriate size,and shown in the banner position. Based on the relative sizes of the adserving location (e.g. banner position), ads and/or additionalinformation can be shown. In the case of text ads, one or more ads maybe served in the place of a normal banner ad; alternatively, an ad maybe complemented or supplemented by additional useful or interestinginformation and shown. Such additional information might include, forexample, product reviews, news stories related to a product or service,additional sources of information relevant to the advertisement or thedocument, including suggested queries that will provide the user withadditional information (e.g. “Query Google for ______ to learn moreabout ______), etc. Alternatively, it may be preferred to include aniframe on the document, and to serve ads (such as text ads) via theiframe.

§ 4.3 Examples of Operations

In one application of the present invention, document information suchas a URL or a snippet of text is received and user to return zero ormore content-relevant ads. FIGS. 12 and 13 are messaging diagramsillustrating two alternative schemes for processing ad requests.

FIG. 12 illustrates a scheme in which a content provider requests ads,is provided with ads and inserts the ads into one of their Web pages.More specifically, responsive to a content request 1240 from a user1210, a content provider 1220 submits an ad request 1250 to acontent-relevant ad server 1230. The content-relevant ad server 1230serves this request 1250, as described above for example, and returnscontent-relevant ads 1270 to the content provider 1220. The contentprovider then returns the requested content with one or more of thecontent-relevant ads inserted 1260 to the user 1210.

FIG. 13 illustrates a scheme in which a content provider returns contentcontaining links to a content-relevant ad server, and an ad request ismade by the end user's browser as it renders the page. Morespecifically, responsive to a content request 1340 from a user 1310, acontent provider 1320 returns the requested content with embedded adcommands 1350. The user's browser 1310 effects the embedded ad commands1350 to effectively submit an ad request 1360 to a content-relevant adserver 1330. Responsive to this ad request 1360, the content-relevant adserver 1330 servers this request 1360, as described above for example,and returns content-relevant ads 1370 to the user's browser 1310 forinsertion onto the content. In one embodiment, the content-relevant ads1370 could include gif-based image ads, text-based ads using iframes,etc.

In either of the schemes described above with reference to FIGS. 12 and13, the content-relevant ad server can user one or more pieces ofinformation to determine content-relevant ads. Such information mayinclude, for example, text of the Web page itself. Such text may befetched from a repository. Alternatively, the contents (or a digestedform of the contents) could be provided by the content provider (e.g.,in ad request 1250). In yet another alternative, a digested form of thecontents (e.g. 50 words, with preference given to important title andlarge font words) can be computed with a small amount of Javascriptembedded on any HTML page and then provide a reasonable summary of thecontents of the page (the digested content would be sent in addition tothe URL as part of the ad request) (e.g., in ad request 1360). Otherinformation may include a per-Web site or per-group-of-pages summaryinformation, pre-computed off-line. Still other information may includeanchor text for the Web page/Web page collection/host, or informationabout the Web page/Web page. collection/host, that returned this page aspart of search engine queries. This is because people may put textualdescriptions in anchor text.

§ 4.4 Conclusions

As can be appreciated from the foregoing disclosure, the invention canbe used to expand situations in which targeted can be used.

1. A computer-implemented method comprising: a) accepting a request forcontent-relevant advertisements, the request including a documentidentifier; b) responsive to the request and using the documentidentifier, determining whether or not document information is availablelocally; c) if it is determined that the document information is notavailable locally, performing one of: (i) using a script to have acontent rendering application provide document information, (ii)retrieving the document information immediately, and (iii) saving thedocument identifier for later retrieval.
 2. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 1 wherein the document is a Web page and the documentidentifier is a URL.
 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1wherein the document information is textual content.
 4. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1 further comprising, if it isdetermined that the document information is available locally,performing at least one of (A) extracting document relevance informationusing the document information and (B) generating document relevanceinformation using the document information.
 5. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 1 wherein if the document information is not availablelocally and if the document identifier is saved for later retrieval,further (d) serving at least one of (A) a house advertisement, (B) ablank advertisement, (C) a random advertisement, and (D) a wellperforming advertisement without regard to its relevance.
 6. Acomputer-implemented method for retrieving document informationcomprising: a) accepting a set of document identifiers corresponding toat least one of (A) document identifiers associated with prior unservedcontent-relevant ad requests and (B) document identifiers provided bycontent providers; and b) retrieving document information from documentscorresponding to the set of document identifiers.
 7. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 6 wherein the documents are Webpages, the document identifiers are URLs, and the act of retrievingincludes crawling the Web pages identified by the URLs.
 8. Acomputer-implemented method for obtaining document information for usein serving a content-relevant ad request, sourced by one of (A) acontent provider serving content to a content rendering application and(B) a content rendering application, the method comprising: a) returningexecutable instructions for reading document information to the contentrendering application; and b) setting, with the content renderingapplication, a document identifier, to address desired documentinformation.
 9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8 wherein theexecutable instructions are Javascript and wherein the content renderingapplication is a browser. 10-11. (canceled)
 12. A computer-implementedmethod for obtaining document information for use in serving a contentrelevant ad request, sourced by one of (A) a content provider servingcontent to a content rendering application and (B) a content renderingapplication the method comprising: a) returning a link to executableinstructions for reading document information to the content renderingapplication; and b) setting, with the content rendering application, adocument identifier, to address desired document information.
 13. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 12 wherein the executableinstructions are Javascript and where in the content renderingapplication is a browser. 14-15. (canceled)
 16. A machine-readablemedium having stored thereon a) a first set of document informationextracted from a shallow crawl of Websites; and b) a second set ofdocument information extracted from a deep crawl of targeted Websites.17. The machine-readable medium of claim 16 wherein the targetedWebsites include Websites provided by content providers having availablead spots.
 18. The machine-readable medium of claim 16 wherein thetargeted Websites include Web pages identified in earlier, unfilled,content-relevant ad requests.
 19. Apparatus comprising: a) an input foraccepting a request for content-relevant advertisements, the requestincluding a document identifier; b) means responsive to the request andusing the document identifier, for determining whether or not documentinformation is available locally; c) means, if it is determined that thedocument information is not available locally, for performing one of:(i) using a script to have a content rendering application providedocument information, (ii) retrieving the document informationimmediately, and (iii) saving the document identifier for laterretrieval.
 20. The apparatus of claim 19 wherein the document is a Webpage and-the document identifier is a URL.
 21. The apparatus of claim 19wherein the document information is textual content.
 22. The apparatusof claim 19 further comprising, means, if it is determined that thedocument information is available locally, for performing at least oneof (A) extracting document relevance information using the documentinformation and (B) generating document relevance information using thedocument information.
 23. The apparatus of claim 19 further comprisingmeans, if the document information is not available locally and if thedocument identifier is saved for later retrieval, for serving at leastone of (A) a house advertisement, (B) a blank advertisement, (C) arandom advertisement, and (D) a well performing advertisement withoutregard to its relevance.
 24. Apparatus for retrieving documentinformation comprising: a) an input for accepting a set of documentidentifiers corresponding to at least one of (A) document identifiersassociated with prior unserved content-relevant ad requests and (B)document identifiers provided by content providers; and b) means forretrieving document information from documents corresponding to the setof document identifiers.
 25. The apparatus of claim 24 wherein thedocuments are Web pages, the document identifiers are URLs, and the actof retrieving includes crawling the Web pages identified by the URLS.26. A machine-readable medium including machine-executable instructionswhich, when executed perform the method of claim
 1. 27. Amachine-readable medium including machine-executable instructions which,when executed perform the method of claim
 6. 28. A machine-readablemedium including machine-executable instructions which, when executedperform the method of claim
 8. 29. A machine-readable medium includingmachine-executable instructions which, when executed perform the methodof claim 12.